King Kaufman's Sports Daily
In the U.S., the Tour de France (it's a big bike race) has not survived the end of Lance. Plus: T.O. shocker -- he's misunderstood!
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July 18, 2006 | So, watching the Tour de France much?
The Tour de France. No, France.
It's a bike race. Remember? Over the past seven years, bicycle racing fans have told me, we Americans had come to love the Tour de France because of Lance Armstrong. He'd sold us on the event and on the sport.
I kept saying that what Lance Armstrong sold us on was Lance Armstrong. If he'd been a Greco-Roman wrestler, it would have been Greco-Roman wrestling, not the Tour de France, that became the signature broadcast for the cable network OLN, which hockey fans and almost nobody else know will soon be renamed Versus.
As soon as Armstrong retired, which he did after winning his seventh straight tour last year, I figured the Tour de France would go back to being one of those nice little niche events in this country, the kind of thing most of us are vaguely aware of and maybe a little interested in, but don't really follow. Kind of like the running of the bulls or those European song competitions.
I wanted to be wrong as I snorted milk through my nose in derisive laughter at the suggestion -- made to me by roughly one person per day during the last few Tours de France via e-mails that dismissed me and anyone else who didn't love the Tour as fat, lazy, knuckle-draggers -- that the event's popularity would outlive Armstrong, that he'd changed the landscape.
That actually would have been nice. I think it's cool when a sport noses its way into the picture in this country, even if the sport doesn't do much for me. I've enjoyed how, at least during the last two World Cups and especially this recent one, soccer has finally become a part of the American consciousness in something like the way it has been predicted to do since the '70s. Good for arena football for carving out its small but notable share of the market. Rock on, ultimate fighting.
But alas the Tour de France, and bicycle racing in general, seem to have faded a bit since Armstrong's retirement. A clue that this was coming might have been gleaned from Americans' cheeky habit of calling it the Tour de Lance during his run.
This is going to come as a surprise to most of you, but the Tour de France has been going on since July 2. It ends Sunday.
By faded a bit I mean ratings are down about 50 percent this year, and buzz is down by like infinity times infinity plus three.